


put your head on my shoulder

by bellowbacks



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, M/M, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 02:34:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21154157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellowbacks/pseuds/bellowbacks
Summary: Eddie made it out. He made it out, but they had to get him to a hospital immediately. Richie left.





	put your head on my shoulder

As soon as Eddie was admitted into the hospital, Richie went to the kissing bridge.

The road was blocked off. Richie didn't know why, but it was convenient for him as he sunk to his knees in front of the old, worn letters carved into the wood.

‘R + E’ stared back at him, and Pennywise’s song echoed in his head. 

"We'll do everything we can, but he's lost a lot of blood," the doctor had said over Eddie's heaving body. "We'll do what we can."

Fuck that, Richie thought, and touched the faded E with a sick sort of reverence. His car keys were in his pocket, and he brought them out. His apartment key was attached to a keychain from a casino he did a show at a few years ago, and he slid it free from the rest of the keys.

Carefully, he dug the point of the key into the wood along the lines of the E he had drawn on impulse 25 years ago.

Even if Eddie died, these letters would remain.

That wasn't enough.

"Rich," a voice said from behind Richie. He didn't turn around until he finished carving the last line of the E.

"Bev," he answered. "Any news?"

Richie slumped against the wooden supports beside his decades old contract. Beverly sat down beside him and softly pulled the sharp key from his hand. She put it in her jacket pocket.

"No, not yet," she said. Richie realized that she was clean.

"You don't smell like sewer, Bev," he managed and let his head loll to the side to look at her. Her hair was damp and she smelled like hotel soap.

"You do," she replied. "You should go back to the Inn, Rich."

Richie scoffed. "Why would I do that?" he said, hanging somewhere between a cry for help and a dry laugh.

Beverly shifted closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. "It'll help," she said, and Richie felt her voice vibrate in his empty ribcage. "Even if all it does is take up a little time, that's time you could've been worrying."

"If Eddie dies while I'm showering," Richie started, and then, as he realized that he didn’t have a joke nor did he want to make one, tension oozed out of his body and he slumped against Beverly.

"He won't," Beverly said. She took his hand and laced their fingers together. There's a moment of silence except for the cars on the roads and the rustle of the trees, and then Beverly pulls her head back and looks Richie in the eye. "When did you carve this?" she asked and reached up between them with her free hand, tracing the bottom of the R with her index finger.

Richie managed a dry laugh. "Oh, that old thing? Get with the times, Bev, that's from '91," he said. As he spoke, his eyes began itching, and he clenched his jaw. "Me? Wildly in big ol' gay love with Eddie since elementary school? Old news, just ask-"

Stan.

It went unsaid, but the tears that finally welled up in Richie's eyes said all that he couldn't.

There was a beat of silence, of just Beverly holding Richie and Richie finally, finally crying and pressing his face against the top of her head.

"I'm in love with Ben," Beverly said after a few minutes, once Richie was breathing evenly again.

Richie snorted, a wet, disgusting noise that he immediately regretted, if only for Beverly’s sake. "I know, Bev. We all know," he said.

"And you're in love with Eddie," she added, and Richie, hearing it said to him for the first time, couldn't help the hard clench in his chest at the words said out loud. "I'll tell Ben if you tell Eddie," Beverly said and pulled back, looking at Richie.

Richie rolled his eyes. "You're going to tell Ben no matter what I do, and what if Eddie-" he said, and then he swallowed, and continued, "What if Eddie beefs it before then, anyways?"

Beverly didn't laugh. 

"He won't," she said. "Promise me you'll tell him."

Richie stayed silent and looked at the road in the distance.

"You have a second chance, Rich, you can't tell me to go after Ben and then shut all of your memories up in a little box and pretend that Eddie never even happened," she said. "You can't."

"I really hate you," Richie mumbled.

"You don't, and I'm right," Beverly retorted and bumped her shoulder into his.

Richie didn't reply, and instead just leaned against her.

Beverly's phone rang. She answered it instantly with, "Bill, hey, is there any news?"

Richie didn't breathe as he listened to Bill's tinny voice through Bev's phone speaker.

"He's okay, he's out of surgery and h-he's okay," Bill said, and Richie felt his entire body get pulled under water, weightless and free for the first time since the deadlights held him.

"Is he awake?" Bev asked, and Bill replied in the negative.

"Is R-Richie with you?" he asked, and Richie immediately shot his hand out to take Beverly's phone.

"He's going to make it?" Richie asked. His voice was hoarse and he felt like he was going to throw up. Again.

Richie could basically hear Bill's smile when he responded, "Yeah, Rich. He's going to b-be okay."

Richie felt himself deflate and he looked down at the concrete below him. The meaningless way that the sidewalk hardened when they poured it decades ago stared back, and Richie almost thought he saw shapes in it before Bev jostled him.

"Let's go back to the hospital, okay?" she said and stood up. She offered Richie her hand, which he took, and the two of them walked over to Richie's car. Richie dug his keys out of his pocket and stuck them in the ignition. His hands weren't shaking; they were heavy and cold. He remembered that Beverly still had his apartment key and tried to make a note to get it back. He’d probably forget. 

When they got there, the rest of the losers were sitting in the waiting room, and they jumped up as soon as Richie and Beverly walked in.

"We didn't want to go in without you two," Ben said, and Beverly said something softly to him that the blood rushing in Richie's ears completely drowned out.

"What room is he in?" he said, and Bill just started walking. Richie stayed close behind as they walked through the maze of hospital rooms, quickly stopping at a still unlabeled door. Bill opened the door, and Richie pushed past him.

Eddie was in the bed, and it was every childhood fear manifested in front of Richie's eyes, and he sunk into the chair already situated beside Eddie's hospital bed. Bill stayed by the entrance, and the rest of the losers filed in. None of them sat but Richie.

"Do we know when he's going to wake up?" Beverly asked. 

"Not yet," Bill said after a moment's silence, just long enough to worm its way into Richie's head.

"Rich, you should go back to the inn and shower," Beverly said and put her hand on his shoulder. "You're still covered in sewer, and..."

Richie didn't move. "I will when he wakes up," he said. His voice was hoarse like he hadn't spoken in days. "I don't want to leave him."

"There's a shower here, and we could bring you s-some clothes," Bill said. "You don't have t-to leave."

Richie pulled his eyes away from Eddie's pale face and looked at Bill. "Yeah," he said. "Thanks, Big Bill."

Bill rolled his eyes. "I'll go, I haven't s-showered yet, if you can't t-tell," he said. "Can I have your room key, Rich?"

Richie wordlessly pulled his room key out of his pants pocket and handed it to Bill. Eddie had a sheet pulled up to his chest and a hospital gown covering the rest of his upper body. His face had a clean bandage pressed to it, and he looked more peaceful than Richie had seen him since 1988.

Richie stayed at Eddie's bedside until around an hour later when Bill came back with a plastic bag full of clothes and all but pulled him out of the chair to shower.

"Mike and I will stay with him, okay?" Bill said as he pushed Richie towards the shower. "We'll come get you if he w-wakes up."

Richie showered reluctantly and in exactly four and a half minutes, and that was still with scrubbing all of the Pennywise grime off of his skin and out of his hair. He looked at himself in the mirror for a second when he got out, seeing how tired he looked, and then he dried off and got into clean clothes. He had to admit, he did feel a lot better.

When he returned to Eddie's bedside, nothing had changed, except Mike was asleep leaning against the wall. 

“Man, he passed out quick. Did he fight an extra-dimensional clown in the sewers a few hours ago or what?” Richie said to Bill as he took his spot beside Eddie. 

“Beep Beep, Richie.”

Richie turned so fast to look at Eddie that his neck cracked, but he didn’t even curse his old man bones. Eddie was awake. 

“You’re awake,” Richie said. 

“Mm, didn’t die, yeah,” Eddie said and closed his eyes. “Feels good.”

“Does it?” Richie asked, and Eddie shook his head. 

“Fuck no, Trashmouth, it feels like shit,” Eddie chuckled, and then he coughed a few times, leaning slightly away from Richie. 

Richie immediately pressed the call button. 

“You’re alive, though, Eds, and that’s fucking crazy,” Richie said, and he felt his face splitting in a smile for the first time since before the Neibolt house. 

“Don’t call me Eds, Rich,” Eddie said and smiled a little, which made him wince at the pull at his bandages on his cheek. 

“I’ll call you anything I wanna call you, because you’re alive, and I’ve fucking earned that right,” Richie said, and then he was crying. 

“Rich,” Eddie mumbled, and reached up a shaky hand to touch Richie’s face. 

He wiped away a tear as Richie leaned forwards, not even noticing Mike and Bill quietly leaving the room. “I thought you were dead, when we got you here,” he managed, “I had to carry you out.” He couldn’t breathe, it was just sticking in his swollen throat and not even touching his lungs. 

“Richie, listen to me,” Eddie said, and Richie took a moment to wipe his face and breathe before he could finally meet Eddie’s eyes. 

“What,” he whispered. 

“I fucked your mom,” Eddie said, the corners of his lips turning up in a smile, and Richie let out such an awful involuntary snort-laugh that snot shot out of his nose and onto the bedsheets. 

“And I was all ready to call up Mrs. Kaspbrack for apology sex after I told her you died,” Richie said, but he was so congested and weepy that it barely came out. 

“Shut up,” Eddie said, but there wasn’t any bite behind it. 

Richie wiped his face on his sleeve and took a few breaths, finally feeling something close to normal. 

“I’m so tired,” Eddie said as the door opened and a nurse stepped in. 

“Eddie was coughing,” Richie said immediately to him. 

“Let me check his vitals, and then you can both rest,” the nurse said, and Richie nodded. He rolled his chair just a few inches further away so the nurse could get at Eddie, and then he watched every movement until he could roll closer again. 

Eddie was almost asleep by the time the nurse was done, and the nurse dimmed the lights as he stepped out. Richie watched the rise and fall of Eddie’s chest until it evened out to a slow, calm rhythm, and then he reached out and touched Eddie’s cheek. Not the stab wound one, but the whole one, the skin marred with stress lines and just as soft as always. 

“I’m glad you didn’t die, Eds,” Richie whispered. “I wouldn’t have gotten to tell you how much I fucking love you if you had.”

Eddie didn’t respond, just kept breathing those deep, even breaths, and Richie laid his head on Eddie’s bedding, right beside Eddie’s own, and slept.

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first It fic but im a huge fan of these sad gays so, here it is!


End file.
